Joe Biden: 'Ugly' 2016 Election Was 'A Battle of Personalities'

Vice President Joe Biden told law students in Washington on Thursday that the "ugly" 2016 election "was more a battle of personalities than it was ideas."

"This has been a very tough election," Biden said at a forum on the future of the American political system sponsored by New York University, CNN reports. "It's been ugly. It's been divisive. It's been coarse.

"It's been dis-spiriting and was more a battle of personalities than it was ideas, in my view."

Biden, 74, said that he has met "every major head of state in the world" in his eight years in the White House and that "I find myself embarrassed by the nature and the way in which this campaign was conducted.

"So much for the shining city on the hill," the vice president lamented, evoking part of the New Testament parable that was later quoted by Puritan preacher John Winthrop — as well as Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Biden's assessment came after saying on Monday that he was "going to run in 2020 . . . for president" before adding later that he was not ruling it out.

In May, he told ABC News that he would have been the Democratic Party's best chance of winning the White House in November.

Hillary Clinton lost to Republican Donald Trump.

Biden acknowledged Thursday that "I know there's a sense in the country that maybe things are worse off than they really are.

"There's a sense that the country — that our institutions aren't working and maybe we can never get them to work.

"For a lot of folks, it feels as if we're more divided than we ever have been in our history," he added, "and that the election brought out the worst in the political system."